The WSM are shocked and deeply saddened to learn of the death of Alan MacSimoin, one of our founder members, a friend, and a key central figure in building the anarchist movement in Ireland for over four decades. Alan had not been a member of WSM for some years but remained politically active right to the end. His last Facebook post on November 29th was supporting the locked out bricklayers at Mary’s Mansions. Alan will be sorely missed by all in the WSM and we offer our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.
Archives: Blog entry
A <em>blog entry</em> is a single post to an online journal, or <em>blog</em>.
On the apolitical labelling of the movement – Many of us have been following the Yellow Vest clashes on the streets of France with great interest and trying to understand this movement that appeared to come from nowhere. It is another story of the pressures of late stage capitalism collapsing the center of politics, a center no longer able to fool more of the people most of the time. A movement made possible by social media but which also reflects the often chaotic ‘apolitics’ of such movements. And worrying in the context of the millions being poured into far right propaganda a movement in which the far-right have made some progress in infiltrating, even if our comrades in France are physically driving them out of the protests.
Before giving the details of my forthcoming talks I need to mention a few things.
The WSM took some time out from our future directions discussions session at Cloughjordan eco village over the week to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
This blog notes three Proudhon texts going on-line, two of which are in Property is Theft! and another newly translated although a previous partial translation appeared there. These preface a discussion of leading Marxist David Harvey’s account of Proudhon’s ideas in his recent book Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason (London: Profile Books, 2017). They are related, in-so-far as Harvey claims to be critiquing Proudhon’s System of Economic Contradictions and the texts are a new, complete translation of its Conclusion and extracts from Proudhon’s attempt to implement his ideas during the 1848 Revolution, Organisation of Credit and The Bank of the People.
Dublin saw a few 100 people gather last Saturday to take part in a rally in solidarity with Extinction Rebellion, the group which has recently emerged in Britian and which yesterday occupied 5 bridges across the Thames, blocking them for about 4 hours and resulting in large numbers of arrests. This act of Civil Disobediance is in the context of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that says we have only a decade to reduce emmissions by about 45% in order to try and keep Climate Change down to a 1.5 degree centagrade increase in global tempertures. [video]
We interviewed William Hederman, an environmental researcher living in County Clare, about the planned Liquefied Natural Gas terminal on the Shannon. Construction of it will mean Ireland will fail to meet its Climate Change commitments and will instead be tied into pumping out additional Greenhouse Gases for decades. As the LNG will come from the US it will includes fracked gas, a process banned in Ireland that releases three times as much of the very powerful Climate Change gas methane as conventional gas. [video]
First off, as part of the Second Nottingham Radical Bookfair, I will be marking the publication by AK Press of the last book Peter Kropotkin published in his lifetime, Modern Science and Anarchy (1913):
Well, there has been no blogging for a bit – been far too busy, both at work and on various projects. My A Libertarian Reader is coming together, although currently I’m trudging through the corrections to my introduction to PM Press’ new edition of Voline’s The Unknown Revolution. They change-tracked everything – so thousands upon thousands of minor changes to accept/reject. Not fun. I have managed to post two articles.
Last night we were at the launch of ‘We’ve come a long way; Reproductive rights of migrants and ethnic minorities in Ireland.’ The books a collection of 16+ pieces by authors from migrant or ethnic minority backgrounds living in Ireland written in the context of the successful decades long struggle to Repeal the 8th Amendment.